Dead ideology

Melita Norwood, the KGB's top female agent in Britain, has died

HER counterparts—Soviet citizens who spied for the western democracies—were jailed, tortured and executed. But when Melita Norwood, who was one of the Soviet Union's top spies in Britain from 1937 to 1972, was unmasked by a defector at the age of 87, the British authorities decided to do nothing. They did not want to be seen as unkind to old ladies.

Mrs Norwood was the proud holder of the Order of the Red Banner, and even received a KGB pension, of £20 a month. But unlike many other spies, her motivation was not money. She died, aged 93, as she had lived: an enthusiastic Communist, with only the mildest reservations about the Soviet Union's blood-drenched history. She “loved Lenin” but conceded that Stalin—“old Joe”—was “not 100%”. Given the chance, she said, she would have done it all again. To her dying day she subscribed to the Morning Star, Britain's Communist daily. From a modern viewpoint, it seems odd that such a nice and intelligent woman should be so firmly attached to such an unpleasant cause.

She worked as a secretary at the British Non-Ferrous Metals Research Association, an innocuous-sounding outfit, but one closely involved in Britain's atomic-weapons research. Her efforts helped ensure that most of Britain's nuclear secrets went straight to Moscow, enabling the Soviet Union to build its atomic bomb earlier, perhaps by two years, than it would have otherwise managed. Her controllers saw her as very important: at one point they had too few intelligence officers in Britain to handle all their spies, so they dumped Kim Philby and kept contact with her.

Mrs Norwood's life raises two intriguing questions. One is about security at the time. She was vetted only in 1945, and even then hardly anyone worried that a paid-up Communist, married to another paid-up Communist, had access to Britain's most sensitive secrets. It wasn't only Mrs Norwood who was complacent about the Soviet Union.

The other is about historical double standards. British officialdom is still trying to hunt down surviving Nazi war criminals: last month the Home Office passed to the police details of 200 suspects, mostly from the Galician Waffen-SS division, whose Ukrainian soldiers were allowed to come to Britain after the war. Another new list of suspects is of 75 guards, from the Auschwitz death camp in Nazi-occupied Poland, who may still be alive in Britain.

Few would argue with that: collaborators with Nazi genocide should not sleep easily at night. But it does seem odd that even the most enthusiastic accomplices of Europe's other totalitarian empire should face not the slightest official displeasure. “I thought I'd got away with it,” said Mrs Norwood, when reporters first came to her door. She had.